


treading water

by miraphora



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Cassian Andor is a terrible spy, F/M, Feelings, Oral Sex, Sex, Speeders, Swimming, Yavin 4, cenote jumping, jyn and i both have a lot of feelings about fear and anger, jyn erso mad af, self-indulgent sea imagery, some slightly odd power dynamics, these two are bad at talking about feelings, this was supposed to be lighthearted fluff and then shit happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 14:28:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10901259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miraphora/pseuds/miraphora
Summary: She wondered, idly, where he had learned to swim; if it had been in becalmed lakes, or sinkholes like this, or if he knew the dangers of an ocean. Riptides that could drag your feet from beneath you, undertow that could tumble you roughly beneath pounding surf, cross currents that could sweep you far from the safety of the shore and shoals.





	treading water

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all. I don't even know. I have zero control over these two.
> 
> PS: If you don't want to read the smut, you can stop at the fourth set of ***

Cassian had already been awake for nearly an hour when his comm buzzed softly. 

The room was dark, but his eyes had adjusted to the faint ambient glow from the keypad on the door and the soft glow of the recessed light above the ‘fresher unit, which crept around the crack of the sliding door. He left that one on as an unspoken courtesy. Jyn didn’t like waking in the tomblike darkness of the base quarters. 

He didn’t mind the light. It let him have moments like this, when he woke before her but had nowhere to be, and could spend countless moments, hours sometimes, watching her face as she slept, stroking an idle thumb up and down her arm where she had wound it tightly around him sometime in the night. He stored these moments up greedily--sometimes he thought he was trying to override the code in his brain that kept showing him the eyes of the beings he’d killed, overwrite each line with the planes and curves of Jyn’s face, her full lips and stubborn jaw softened in sleep, the straight line of her brows relaxed. The tender shadows of her lashes on her cheeks. 

It was better than when she woke before him, and he woke to careful distance between their bodies, her shoulders curled inward and back to him. He liked those moments less. He wasn’t sure if she was trying to protect herself or him, or whether it was some other instinct entirely that carved out that distance. 

He scooped up the comm before it could buzz again, keeping his motions careful and minimal, not wanting to wake Jyn.

“Andor,” he murmured softly in acknowledgement. 

There was a faint crackle and then Bodhi’s voice trickled through, equally furtive. “There’s a speeder waiting for you by the west hangar, boss. I wouldn’t leave it too late though, sun’s rising.”

A hesitation, and Cassian tried to stave off the tension of disappointment. “Only one?”

“Sorry, I _barely_ got away with that one. Really sorry. It’ll be cozy?” the pilot tried, his cautious optimism muted by the frequency. 

Cassian shut his eyes and suppressed a sigh. “Thanks, Bodhi. I owe you one.”

He owed him a lot more than that. 

There was a muted bit of dismissive Jedhan that was nothing but white noise to Cassian’s untutored ear. “Just give our girl a good time, eh?”

Cassian felt a grin twitch across his lips. “Affirmative.”

That was a Rogue One affectation that he knew drove Jyn mad, that “our girl” thing. It had grown out of Baze’s affectionate “little sister” and gained legs of its own after awhile. Bodhi was the only one she’d let get away with it without repercussion. 

Cassian was still too cautious of driving her away to feel comfortable calling her his anything, even in jest.

He dropped the comm back to the bed at his side, scrubbed his hand over his face to try to shake off some of the lethargy that always lingered, with Jyn warm against him. The rhythm of her breathing had changed without him noticing, and when he dropped his hand it was to find the faintly-outlined moon of her face tilted up toward him and the dark wells of her eyes fixed on him curiously. 

He rubbed his hand firmly down the arm she still had wrapped around him, settling his fingers into the crook of her elbow. “Hey.”

An intent pause. “Hey. I thought you’d be gone.” 

She didn’t say “I was afraid,” but he thought it was there, in her hesitation. He couldn’t make out enough of her expression in the dark to be sure. He squeezed her arm gently.

“I’ve got a few days.” He didn’t add “I told you that last night.” He knew why she hadn’t put much credence in it. It wouldn’t have been the first time--wouldn’t have been the last time--that he’d been called away in the middle of her sleep cycle, that he’d had to leave her with a soft, heart-aching kiss to her forehead, breathing her in and hoping her scent would keep the blood and carbon and blaster oil at bay for a few hours at least.

“I just heard the comm, and thought--”

He grinned down at her a little, didn’t know if she could see it in the dim. Stilled as her hand crept up, fingertips tracing the faint curve of his lower lip. He pressed a light kiss to them. “It was just Bodhi. I have something to show you. If you’re awake?”

She turned her face down against his chest with a muffled grumble. “I’m awake _now_.” 

“I promise to make it worth your while,” he murmured, dragging her fully on top of him. 

Her hips canted down firmly against his, and she lifted her head and propped her crossed arms on his chest. “Oh?” she prompted, with a speculative note.

A faint huff of a laugh escaped him and he slid his hands down to the small of her back and held her still. “Can you be patient?” There was a rich edge of teasing provocation creeping into his voice.

She pretended to give that consideration, head tilted slightly. He could just make out the crooked twist of her lips. “Do I get to blow something up or steal something?”

He made an incomprehensible sound of fond exasperation and boosted her up the length of his body enough that he could kiss her impertinent mouth. He wanted to say something foolish--more and more often words he’d never felt the urge to say before crowded up behind his teeth and tongue, wanting to escape. Words a spy couldn’t afford. Words a killer didn’t deserve.

She eased back from the kiss with a tender suck of his lower lip, and a slow caress of her lips against his lightly bearded jaw. “We’re burning daylight, Captain.”

She’d heard enough of Bodhi’s comm, then. He squeezed her side gently. “Get ready, then.”

***

Dawn had fully broken by the time they made it to the west hangar. Jyn had two fingers hooked through one of his belt loops as they slipped outside the hangar and she followed him around a corner into the cover of verdant vines and foliage. He tried not to be distracted by how much he liked it when she clung to him in any way.

The promised speeder was tucked into the cover of the leafy greenery, two helmets resting on the long seat. This would be the tricky part--he knew she’d hate the idea of hanging onto him. It was why he’d wanted two speeders in the first place. 

He was still trying to decide how to finesse her into compliance when she finished snapping the helmet on and looked at him expectantly, the other helmet held out to him in her free hand. 

“What’s wrong?”

He took the helmet, snapping it on to delay his response for a moment. “I’d let you drive, but you don’t know where we’re going,” he finally said.

She tilted one brow at him, nonplussed. “I’ll just ride behind you. What, are you afraid I’ll distract you, Captain?” Her lips crooked teasingly. “I’ll keep my hands above the waist.”

He blinked at her, caught a little off-guard by the lack of a fight. Maybe he wasn’t as good at reading her as he thought.

He slung a leg over the seat of the speeder and held it steady on its rocking repulsors as Jyn clambered on behind him and slid her arms easily around his waist. She’d done this before obviously--she was careful to keep her arms above his hips and hands folder flat over his stomach so she didn’t interfere with his mobility. 

Speeders were touchy nerve-burners, sensitive to weight distribution, torque and torsion. He wasn’t a big fan of how exposed they left a rider--not the way he thought Jyn would probably love the open air and danger of extreme speed--but the spot he wanted to get them to was about an hour’s hike on foot. The speeder was just quicker.

“Ready?” he asked over his shoulder.

She gripped the seat with her knees and came up behind him like she was posting a trot, her voice soft in his ear and sending a shiver through him. “Affirmative, Captain.” The speeder barely rocked as she settled back down. 

He tried not to think about the taut muscles in her thighs as he toed the clutch down and twisted the shifter back towards him. The way her fingers tightened in his shirt and her little joyful bark of a laugh as they shot off into the encroaching jungle was like the first solid intel payoff on a deep cover operation. He couldn’t hide the predatory slash of his own grin, and didn’t have to--there was no one to see.

***

The speeder made a twenty minute ride out of what would have been an hour hike. The jungle canopy had fallen away in the last klick, and the spot where he finally pulled them up to a showy stop that slung the speeder around with a spray of loam from the repulsors was surrounded by waist-high viney foliage and ferns and broad-spike leafed plants with waxy blooms. 

Jyn swung herself off, squeezing his waist slightly, and stood beside him, working off her helmet and shaking her hair out. She looked around as she scrubbed a hand through her bangs to settle them, then glanced at him curiously. They were coming up on the point in the moon’s shorter-than-standard rotation where Yavin’s light would beam down into the clearing, unimpeded by the canopy they’d left behind.

Cassian ignored her glance for the moment, easing off the speeder and setting his helmet down, and turning in a slow circle to orient himself. His target was maybe fifteen yards to the north. He could see a faint divide in the undergrowth, a footpath that wasn’t used frequently enough to have been beaten back completely. 

“We’re pretty far from the base here,” she said, in a leading sort of way that invited him to explain. 

He made a little sound of agreement and dropped down to the ground to start undoing the laces of his boots. She quirked a brow at him and crossed her arms over her chest. 

“If you brought me klicks from base just to fuck in the woods and get eaten up by bugs, I’m going to steal your clothes and leave you stranded out here,” she said, in a bland conversational tone.

He grinned up at her unrepentantly, feeling a decided lack of his usual alert strain, now that they were deep in the jungle and at the end of the tether he always felt to his duty. “Take off your boots.” His eyes flicked over her consideringly. “And your pants. And vest.” 

The lines around her pursed lips deepened suspiciously. “Cassian…”

He rolled his socks down into his boots and dropped them next to the speeder and stood up to pull his shirt off over his head, draping it over the seat. He ran a hand through his hair and tilted his head, smiling at her a little crookedly, feeling the expression crinkle into the lines around his eyes. Foolish words were tickling at the back of his teeth again. “Do you trust me?”

It was the sort of question that could go any which way depending on her mood. He watched her test a few responses on her tongue before settling on a reply that was mostly an obvious and intentional lie accompanied by her wry sidelong smirk. “About as far as I can throw you.”

She slipped out of her vest, setting it next to his shirt, and gave his bare chest an assessing look before pulling her own shirt off as well. He ran his tongue along the inside of his lower lip, appreciating the stubbornly compact musculature of her shoulders and the full curve of her breasts beneath the thin synthcloth tank and breast band. She had more scars than he did, though Scarif had done a number on him. 

The amused look she shot at him beneath her lashes as she shimmied out of her fatigues reminded him that he was supposed to be undressing and not ogling like a nerfherder. He coughed slightly, feeling his ears heat a bit, and shucked off his pants and tossed them over the speeder. 

He slipped past her, taking her hand and threading his fingers with hers. She gave him a slight headshake and curious look, like she was trying to figure him out, but followed easily when he pulled her along after him down the faint path. 

Ferns and waxy leaves and curling vines brushed at them as they walked, and Cassian felt her hand twitch in his as she fought the urge to squirm away. 

The cenote opened up before him, hard to see until you were right up on its edge, the foliage all around its almost perfectly circular lip growing up to and over the ledge. Vines and roots trailed down into the water below, some anchoring again in the limestone-rich base of the cavern and sending nutrients back up to the ledge above. 

Cassian turned his back to it, bare feet edging back carefully toward the edge. Jyn was looking up at him questioningly, wondering at his stopping. His crooked little smile was back, startlingly mischievous. 

“Are you ever going to tell me why we’re nearly naked in the jungle?” There was a creeping edge to her voice that might grow into annoyance if he didn’t get on with it. 

“I told you. I want to show you something.”

Her gaze raked up and down his body and her lips twitched again. “I’ve seen it.” 

Cassian huffed a laugh, trying to tamp down on his amusement. The grin widened without him even trying though. “Trust me,” he said again, letting go of her hand. 

Her eyes narrowed a little at the change in his tone. “Cass--”

He stepped back. Back again. And dropped without a sound, as if he had stepped right off the edge of the world.

***

Jyn’s heart stopped.

That was the only way to describe the feeling. There had been a steady second between each of her heartbeats, and then, suddenly, there were three--four--five--the organ slammed against her breastbone with a clenching shudder, and she stumbled forward with a strangled shout.

Her toes suddenly grasped at the edge of an abyss and her vision greyed at the edges with fear and adrenaline. She thought the world was spinning at first, but realized that spiraling was just the fact that she was staring into a wide-mouthed hole in the ground. 

A splash echoed below, nearly drowned out by the breath tearing in her throat. She fought back vertigo that was too familiar, and wholly unwelcome, and watched in disbelief, knees locked, as a sleek dark head broke the turquoise water below her and Cassian’s face tilted up to search the edges of the hole. Looking for her.

She swayed weakly, feeling light-headed, and forced her knees to unlock, staggering back a step, two, from the ledge. She bowed over, hands resting on her knees, and tried to get her heart and her breathing under control.

It wasn’t Scarif. This wasn’t the data tower. Cassian wasn’t dead or dying. 

Not kriffing yet, at least.

The grey at the edges of her vision went a little red and she hissed a harsh breath. She was going to kill him.

“Jyn?” His raised voice echoed around the innards of the cavern and drifted up to her. 

She took one step, two, picturing the brief glimpse she’d had of the pool below, the width of the hole, and dove off the ledge into open air, her body a sleek muscular arc of absolute fury. She was going to drown him, kill him, and then possibly fuck him until he couldn’t see straight.

Kriffing bastard.

She barely heard his quick, undignified yelp as he scrambled to clear the water beneath her dive. Water closed over her head and she sheared beneath the surface and immediately corrected her angle, sweeping back up in a tight arc back toward the sunlight streaming down through the wide mouth of the sinkhole. She breached the surface with a gasp, chest expanding on a deep breath as her lungs, compressed from the dive, filled gratefully. Water streamed back from her face and she tossed her head, reached up with slick hands to wipe at her eyes. 

There was only the faintest tingle of salinity in the water--not enough to burn. It was more mineral-rich than anything. Eddies of water moved around her body and she held still, treading water in place, as Cassian surfaced again right beside her. 

“Jyn?” His voice, so good at being modulated and even-toned when he was working, was threaded with the tension of sudden uncertainty. “Are you--”

She lunged at him, shoving him by the shoulders back under the water. The startled moment of wide-eyed incredulity was deeply satisfying as he sank like a stone and eeled away from her, kicking sinuously to get some distance. 

He was more cautious when he surfaced the next time, his brows drawn together. “Blast it, Jyn--”

“You scum-sucking son of a Hutt!” She didn’t like how shrill her voice came out when it broke on the last syllable and echoed around the cavern as if to mock her.

He gaped, too taken aback to even fall back on his impassive face. “What?”

She swept her arm violently through the water, splashing a wave at him furiously. “You can’t just pull a stupid stunt like that!” 

She was glad for the concealment of the water suddenly--she could feel a sharp prick of angry tears, and that humiliation would have been too much to bear. She wanted suddenly to be very far away from here, and alone.

He was easing closer, a full-blown frown working across his face. He looked younger, with his hair all slicked down over his ears like a seal. There had been seals on Lah’mu. 

She turned her chin, avoiding his searching gaze. It wasn’t like after Eadu, when he’d deflected her rage with evasion and heated rhetoric. He was genuinely confused. This, she supposed, was what came of never talking about their nightmares.

She took a deep breath that was trying very hard to pretend it wasn’t half a sob, as his hands cautiously stroked her upper arms. 

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, but she could tell it was the sort of apology people gave when they had no idea what they were apologizing for.

She took another deep breath, jaw clenched, heart still thudding.

“It was just a bit of fun. I didn’t mean to--” He broke off with a telling silence that was beginning to be realization. 

She suspected “scare you” had been on the tip of his tongue. He wasn’t stupid. Just abominably slow, sometimes, when it came to them, and to her.

She smacked her hand flat against the center of his chest, a dull wet thwack of flesh on flesh. Her eyes were still burning as she glared up at him finally, hair plastered to her jaw. “There’s nothing funny about watching you fall.”

His jaw worked silently for a moment, his dark eyes pained, lashes clumped into awkward spikes from the water. She nearly couldn’t bear how open his expression was as he processed her words. 

“The tower. I didn’t--I didn’t even think--” 

Jyn closed her eyes and gritted her teeth to get away from his expression. “I swear to seven hells, Cassian, if you say you didn’t think it would matter to me--”

“No.” His voice was intent, and she felt his fingertips trace her jaw with unwanted tenderness. “I didn’t know that haunted you. I wouldn’t have done it. If I’d realized.” 

He was too close, and she couldn’t breathe. “Don’t touch me.”

She kicked away, arching back and under the water and twisting away from him, swimming until her searching hand found the rough scrape of limestone. She hauled herself up gratefully onto a ledge, sitting with her feet in the water, hands white-knuckling the edge while she focused on breathing. 

Water lapped around her calves gently, and she knew without looking up that he was near, still treading water, holding steady just outside her orbit. She wondered, idly, where he had learned to swim; if it had been in becalmed lakes, or sinkholes like this, or if he knew the dangers of an ocean. Riptides that could drag your feet from beneath you, undertow that could tumble you roughly beneath pounding surf, cross currents that could sweep you far from the safety of the shore and shoals. 

The rage had dissipated quicker than it used to, when they had first met. She had a hard time being angry at him, when he kept dragging himself back to her side over and over. She knew, even if he still didn’t seem to believe it, that she wasn’t leaving. She had enlisted in his Rebellion, hadn’t she? She shared his bed. Guarded his sleep. As he guarded hers. She waited for him to drag himself back to her after each mission. She knew he waited for her. They didn’t _talk_ about any of it. They had never talked much, about things that mattered, without wounding each other deeply.

They had seemed to do alright, not talking. Maybe she had been deluding herself.

“I didn’t know you watched me fall. I thought--I don’t know what I thought. I thought you kept climbing.” He didn’t make it an excuse. Just knowledge, offered.

She lifted her chin just a little, eyeing him. His expression was still so open, almost unfamiliar. A sudden twitch in the corner of his lips was wry and put her back on solid footing, though.

“I should have known you wouldn’t have followed orders.”

She snorted, looked down and away, but found her gaze stealing back after a moment. She didn’t want to tell him that she had almost let go of her handholds and fallen after him in the tower. It felt like a weakness she couldn’t afford to expose. It was the sort of knowledge she had kept in the cave, before. The sort of knowledge that would have been exploited by Saw’s guerrillas. Hells, the sort of knowledge _Cassian_ would have exploited, if he had been any sort of spy at all, where she was concerned.

What she finally said was: “I saw you fall. I thought you were dead. And when you staggered out from behind that column at the top of the tower, I thought you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”

There was a look in his eyes like a heat-crazed agate, fracturing under pressure. She continued relentlessly, and that _was_ like after Eadu, when she had lashed him with her words. She wasn’t trying to hurt him now--but she maybe was trying to break him down.

“You had this look on your face, the sort of look I’d only ever seen once before--”

She stared him down mercilessly, feeling heat in her chest. The lines of pressure were spreading in his face, radiating out from the corners of his eyes, the sides of his slackening lips. And his eyes--the intensity was enough to sear her, enough to make her breath come short. 

“That look, right there.” Her fingertips dug into the limestone, scrambling for purchase. “The last time I saw that look on someone’s face, my mother died trying to put a blaster bolt in Orson Krennic to save my father.” 

She set those words free, and they left her like a weight, like free-fall, like a long headfirst dive into crystalline waters.

“Jyn.” His voice was tight, agonized. He was struggling to keep his head above water.

She smiled, more gently than she thought she knew how, and leaned forward. “ _Cassian_. Stop treading water and come here before you drown.”

***

For a few endless moments, Cassian Andor forgot how to breathe. His body tingled all over, like heat rash, like the stunned moments after a concussion grenade. Jyn’s blue-grey eyes were like an ocean tide pulling him inexorably out to sea, and he had thought he was a strong swimmer, but he couldn’t fight this immense pressure. 

The gentle lap of water over his lower lip, the mineral-rich water slipping into his mouth, jolted him back to himself, and he coughed reflexively, surging forward towards the safety of the ledge. His arms trembled as he levered himself up beside her, and he collapsed onto his side on the limestone ledge with a ragged gasp that had nothing to do with the water and everything to do with the way she had just stripped him down to his core.

He rolled onto his back, focusing on breathing, and draped one arm over his eyes. He was twitching all over like a fly-stung bantha, and he knew he’d lost all control of his expression. He felt raw and exposed.

He nearly leapt out of his skin when her hand, chilled and gentle, pressed to his chest, over his heart. There was skin, muscle, cartilage, bone between the stutter of his heartbeat and her fingertips, but he felt like she was pressing them right to the core of him, marking him indelibly. He took a harsh breath as her hand moved upward, tracing the wing of one clavicle, out along his shoulder, inward to the elbow of his crooked arm, and out to his wrist. 

He took a harsh breath as she curled her fingers around his wrist and pushed his arm down to the stone above his head. He felt the shift of her weight as she rose above him, but he couldn’t open his eyes. If he opened his eyes, he knew she’d see that look, and he was still too raw to search her face for an answer to a question he wouldn’t ever ask.

Her breath gusted over his lips, warm and tender, a prelude to her kiss. Her lips were cool, wet, tasting like the mineral water and faint salt tang of the cenote. Her tongue was sweet, soft, as it dipped between his lips, exploring his mouth. He gave her all the access she asked for--it seemed a moot point to deny her anything now.

She coaxed him with a patience she rarely exhibited. He couldn’t stop himself from response, from dragging his tongue against hers, slick and sensuous, feeling the heat of her mouth warm him out of his shocked lethargy. Her hand shifted on his wrist, sliding up, fingers twining with his. 

His heart thumped. He tilted his chin up, a silent invitation. She didn’t hesitate to drag her mouth from his, lips brushing across his jaw, down, down to the tender, vulnerable spot underneath. She pressed a sucking, biting kiss to him, and moved on when she had bitten the blood to the surface of his brown skin, warming him against the chill of the cavern’s shadows and the water drying on them, leaving silky grit on their flesh. He inhaled slow and deep through his nose, lips compressed with mounting tension. 

Her tongue probed the skin of his throat, before her lips sealed tight in a choice spot over the artery where his heartbeat was thundering. This time when she sucked and bit and drew up a welt, it felt like she was sucking all the way from the root of his cock. He groaned softly, feeling heat race down his chest. His hips twitched, quick and stifled, before he got control of himself. 

Her tongue soothed over the welt, then trailed down again, dipping into the hollow of his throat where droplets of water had gathered. He took another ragged breath. Her hand slipped from his with a last gentle squeeze, and she worked her way down his chest, lips brushing feathersoft over his skin. The trailing tendrils of her hair were cold and damp, painting unseen lines and whorls on him. When she dragged the edge of her teeth slowly, delicately, across one nipple, he made a choked sound, hips rolling. 

Her breath washed over his belly as she slunk down farther. He twitched the hand she had abandoned above his head, but felt some inscrutable compulsion to leave it tethered there. His other hand lay cold beside his hip. He wanted to reach for her--he wanted to push her away--he wanted to beg her--he wanted to command her--

He shuddered as her teeth sank into the point of his hip in a tender nip. Her fingers, warming from contact with his skin, curled beneath the band of his soaked shorts. He took another deep breath, trying in vain to control the leaping pulse of his cock. She paused--he could feel the hesitation in her hands.

His heart was still thudding and he felt a little light-headed. 

“Cassian.” Her voice popped the bubble that had formed around them. Low, husky, softer on the consonant than it normally was. 

He took another breath. He felt like he was relearning how to breathe with the knowledge that she knew. She knew exactly what was in his foolish heart. She was going to ruin him with it.

“Look at me.”

Opening his eyes was just one more surrender. Did it even matter now?

He stared at the pocked limestone overhead for one heartbeat, two, before craning his neck and twisting his shoulders to look at her, down the length of his body. Her eyes still had that undertow gravity to them. Something twitched across her brow, some microexpression he was too dazed to read, and her gaze flickered up to where his hand was still anchored above his head. Her eyes darkened with sudden comprehension, and he felt heat burn at his throat, throbbing in the bite she’d left.

“Oh,” she said softly, the utterance dropping into his silence like a stone into a still pool.

She was the one who took a deep, steadying breath this time. It calmed him, warmed him to watch her breast heave quick, and then slower. Her thumbs stroked into the hollows of his hips, tender and soothing. 

“Talk to me, Cassian. Is this okay?” She stroked her fingertips through the sparse hair trailing beneath his shorts, teasing along the line of fabric, waiting for him to respond.

He swallowed with a painful click. “Yes,” he rasped. A pause. “Please,” he added.

A smile flickered across her lips and disappeared into their corners like quicksilver. She lowered her head, eyes locked on his, and brushed her lips along the heavy curve of him beneath the wet fabric. 

He felt more alert, with her looking at him like that. A slight smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “I’m cold and wet,” he murmured with a hint of irony. 

She grinned up at him toothily. “I can fix that, if you like.”

“Please,” he repeated, with more heat this time.

“There you are,” she breathed, approvingly. Her hands resumed their exploration, easing his wet shorts down his hips and legs and tossing them aside. 

He muttered a soft curse in Festian at the chill on his aching flesh. Then he nearly swallowed his tongue as he was engulfed in wet heat. His hips surged up quickly before he could stop the reflex, and he bit off a sharp sound--Jyn didn’t stop, she took his thrust and sank deeper, her throat working around him. 

He went still, hips aching, the muscles in his abdomen quivering with tension. His hand was in a tight fist above his head. He banged his knuckles down against the limestone, gasping harshly, as she worked up to the tip of him and then sank down again. She couldn’t maintain that deep plunge for long, he knew. She pulled back, focusing the heated stroke of her tongue and caress of her lips at his head, her hand stroking his shaft.

He shuddered, fingers itching with the need to touch her. “Jyn.”

She pulled up, taking a slightly ragged breath that gusted through her puffed lips and across his twitching head. She licked her lips, eyes dark. “What do you need?”

He laughed jaggedly, dropping his head back. “You. Just you.” It didn’t even feel dangerous to admit it, now.

“Come here.”

She was all hot bare skin when she straddled his thighs, and he felt her shiver as he tensed his core and curled his body up to her. She had her lower lip caught between her teeth, but she eased up eagerly against him when he was in reach, her hands curling against his cheeks, holding him as she leaned in to kiss him. Her lips were warm and soft, and he could taste the salt and musk of himself on her tongue. He made a soft, hungry sound and chased her as she leaned back trying to break the kiss. 

Her fingers threaded back through his damp feathering hair, tugging lightly. He shivered and relented, easing back and settling his hands on her hips. Her gaze roamed over his face, and she leaned back in to press a quick kiss to the corner of his lips, where the lines were usually deeply carved, but where he felt relaxed, now. 

He stroked her sides, spreading his fingers over her ribs. She kept her gaze steady on his as she rose on her knees and shifted closer, sinking down onto his length in one slow, agonizing stretch. He pressed down on her hips, anchoring her at the deepest point, slow enough that she could stop him if she wanted. She slipped her arms around his shoulders instead, taking another shuddering breath and rolling her hips down against him to shift the angle. 

“Jyn.” Her name escaped him on a breath, and he leaned his forehead against hers, focused on breathing and the slick stretch of her around him. He tilted his head, sought enough angle to catch at her lips with his, steal her breath. “Move, _querida_.”

She nodded against him, started a slow, inexorable rhythm, riding him like the tide. He didn’t have leverage to do much but hold her, steady her, but he slipped one hand into the heat between their bodies and stroked a fingertip against the swollen bud of her right at the top where she was stretched around him. She shuddered and muffled a soft sound against his shoulder, open-mouthed and gasping for breath. She was in that abstracted, inward-focused stage of arousal where all her energy was directed toward the pursuit of orgasm--he shifted his hand and worked his thumb in quick circles against her clit, alternating with a slow, steady press as she sank to the root of him. 

He could feel her thighs quivering with tension, and teased a fingertip along her labia, slick around his heat. Heard her sharp gasp, resumed his quick, stirring strokes, and was rewarded with the deep trembling clutch of her orgasm. He stole another deep kiss, tongue thrusting in a heated mimicry of his cock, and she moaned into his mouth, hips stuttering into a rolling rhythm that rode out the last tremors and dragged him down like an undertow. He pressed his mouth to her shoulder, muffling his desperate breaths, as his vision whited out for a moment and he lost himself inside her. His hands tightened on her hips, and he felt the blunt edge of her nails scratch tenderly along his shoulders.

She relaxed bonelessly in his lap, making no move to separate their bodies. Their soft, humid breaths mingled in the chill shadows of the cavern. The silence settled around them, and into them. He felt centered again, moored by the weight of her against him. 

It couldn’t last, of course. The galaxy, a war, other people’s lives moved on beyond them.

There was a shout from somewhere above, a hollered “‘Ware below!” and a dramatic splash from the deep well of the cenote. Water lapped over the ledge where they were still pressed together hip to shoulder. 

Tension shot down Jyn’s back and she started back in his lap, nearly overbalancing back into the pool. He caught her and met her look of mingled horror and hysteria with a look that must have matched. They burst out laughing, and she collapsed back against him, painfully aware of how very naked they were and how very exposed.

“Cassian,” she breathed heavily into his neck, as the sound of two more bodies splashing into the cenote echoed behind them. “How in hell do we get out of here?!”

**Author's Note:**

> The last thing they hear as they’re clambering up the rough ladder out of the cenote is Kes Dameron’s raucous voice calling out: “Blazes, Andor! For an Intelligence officer, you sure did get _made_!”
> 
> ***
> 
> Y'all. I say again. I was trawling Diego Luna's instagram the other night for no reason I can possibly disclose, and saw pics from a trip he took to the Yucatan. One of the pics was of swimming in a cenote--one of those gorgeous limestone sinkholes that form with foliage growing right up to the edges. And I was like, well shit, Cassian is going to take Jyn swimming, this should be fluffy and innocent. 
> 
> And then Feelings and Angst happened. Because Cassian is a doofus.
> 
> I'm pretty sure this entire thing got away from me and makes no sense, but I hope you are able to derive some small pleasure from it anyway.


End file.
